Configuring and managing the sign-up flow with user approval

:bookmark: This guide explains the sign-up process when the “must approve users” setting is enabled, including configuration steps and the user experience.

:person_raising_hand: Required user level: Administrator

When you want to control who can join your Discourse community, you can enable a setting that requires new users to be approved before they can log in. This feature is commonly used for private communities or public forums that want to limit participation.

Configuring user approval

To set up user approval for your Discourse site:

  1. Enable the must_approve_users site setting.

  2. (Optional) If you want to make your community private, enable the login_required site setting. This prevents anonymous users from viewing your forum’s content.

User sign-up process

Once you’ve enabled user approval, here’s what the sign-up process looks like for new users:

  1. The user visits your forum and clicks the “Sign Up” button.

  2. The user enters their account details and receives an activation email.

  3. After activating their email, the user sees this message on the forum:

    Welcome to Discourse!

    A moderator must manually approve your new account before you can access this forum. You’ll get an email when your account is approved!

    If the user attempts to log in before approval, they’ll see this message:

    Your account hasn’t been approved yet. You will be notified by email when you are ready to log in.

Moderator approval process

  1. Moderators receive on-site notifications for pending user approvals.

  2. If a request remains in the review queue, a reminder email is sent to all users with full Moderator status. The reminder email is managed by the PendingUsersReminder background job, which runs hourly but can be delayed using the pending users reminder delay site setting.

  3. Once a staff member approves a user, the user receives an email notification.

Additional resources

Last edited by @hugh 2024-07-05T01:35:58Z

Check documentPerform check on document:
16 likes

9 posts were split to a new topic: Signup email not being sent

3 posts were split to a new topic: Does changing ‘must approve users’ effect existing users?

Re: the must_approve_users site setting.

In light of the information provided at Does changing ‘must approve users’ effect existing users? - #2 by Moin

All existing users are be marked as approved when you turn on that setting.

would it be possible to update the screengrab in the documentation above:

to remove the warning, like the screengrab at:

Possibly also adding the text “All existing users are marked as approved when you turn on the must_approve_users setting.” to the documentation to clarify the outcome.

1 like

Als moderator kreeg ik vroeger berichten in de ‘inbox’ van Discourse wanneer er nieuwe gebruikers waren die beoordeeld moesten worden. Nu komen ze binnen als onderwerpen in mijn ‘Staff’-categorie. Ik heb liever dat het berichten zijn en dat mijn lijst met nieuwe onderwerpen in ‘Staff’ niet wordt vervuild. Hoe doe ik dat?

I think this was changed 4 years ago (PR). The setting is pending users reminder delay minutes and the background job runs every 5 minutes.

Kunt u meer details delen? Ik heb geprobeerd dit te reproduceren, maar de wachtende gebruikersherinnering PM werd nog steeds naar de meest recent actieve moderators gestuurd.
Ik dacht dat u het misschien had over de herinnering over wachtende reviewables, maar die wordt ook niet in de staff-categorie geplaatst. Het wordt naar de inbox van de moderator-groep gestuurd.

Bedankt voor uw reactie. Hier is een screenshot van hoe mijn personeelscategorie er momenteel uitziet. Alle berichten “nieuwe gebruiker .. vereist beoordeling” zijn wat ik uiteindelijk in mijn inbox wil hebben in plaats van als onderwerpen in de personeelscategorie. Ik ben nieuw in discourse, dus waarschijnlijk heb ik een instelling gewijzigd die dit veroorzaakt, ik kan er alleen niet achter komen wat ik heb gedaan.

[Afbeelding geredigeerd om persoonlijke informatie te beschermen]

:thinking: These don’t look like the required review messages from Discourse core.

Those look like this

Yours look like this

User X has just registered an account to the Fornax Science Console

New user Y registration request requires review for access to the Fornax Science Console

You seem to use openid-connect instead of the Discourse registration flow. So I don’t think this documentation topic is any help for you. The messages you see are not related to must_approve_users.

Bedankt, dit is nuttig om te weten waar ik vervolgens moet zoeken.